General Conversation advise for 2011 PNM

[atrianglepi]

My daughter sounds similar to yours. She just finished recruitment and said she was a little uncomfortable at the first round of parties. My advice would be to search this site and find some sample questions she will be asked during recruitment. Have neighbors/relatives practice these with her. That way she will have answers prepared. I also told my daughter "don't give one word answers, try to tell a story". For example "Where are you from?" Instead of just saying Sometown USA, say we moved around a lot, etc or I have always lived in Sometown but enjoy traveling to.... If your daughter is comfortable with the conversation, she will have a more enjoyable time. Good luck to her.

[Alumiyum]

Originally Posted by atrianglepi

My daughter sounds similar to yours. She just finished recruitment and said she was a little uncomfortable at the first round of parties. My advice would be to search this site and find some sample questions she will be asked during recruitment. Have neighbors/relatives practice these with her. That way she will have answers prepared. I also told my daughter "don't give one word answers, try to tell a story". For example "Where are you from?" Instead of just saying Sometown USA, say we moved around a lot, etc or I have always lived in Sometown but enjoy traveling to.... If your daughter is comfortable with the conversation, she will have a more enjoyable time. Good luck to her.

This is similar to the advice that my mother gave me, the most important part being "don't give one word answers".

To the OP, take a minute to cool off. It's understandable for people to question why she isn't here asking herself, you've explained, and now it's all good.

[Katmandu]

WhatstheRUSH, my God Daughter just went through recruitment out of state at a competitive school and had a very happy result with a full schedule each round. She is a serious girl--not shy, but would definitely be more to the reserved side than the extroverted side. By nature, she was not really in her comfort zone in the early rounds when parties are short and first impressions are all you have to go on. However, she had a great time, and I think preparing her for what she might encounter (enthusiastic chanting/singing at the door, high energy, loud first rounds and being bumped to other actives, being cut by houses she liked, etc) helped a lot.

Practicing answers to those "What's your major?", "How do you like school so far?" What dorm are you in?" and learning how to turn those rather simple questions into real conversations is something that can be practiced and learned. We encouraged her to think about what questions she might ask of the actives and what she wanted to learn about sorority life and to formulate those ideas into open ended questions.

Having recs from people who really know the PNM may enable the chapter to make a good match between active and PNM, so good recs are important for a variety of reasons. She found, for instance, that in the early rounds, one house matched her with a member from her hometown. Another put her with a girl who had participated in her same (kind of unusual) sport in HS. Another took the same AP classes, another had a different connection, and so on. Although this didn't happen in each house, it happened often enough to make her realize that the sororities were as interested in getting to know her and put her at ease as she was in getting to know them. Even if that early connection didn't happen, we prepared her for the fact that deeper conversations were coming down the road, and more connections would happen later in the week as the mutual selection process kicked in and the parties got longer.

I hope this helps. There is a lot of helpful information on GC--so have her browse around.